Oscars 2018: VES Awards

Funny story — I forgot VES was handing out awards today. I was writing up my Best Visual Effects category breakdown and went to look up when VES would be announcing so I’d have an idea… turns out, it was tonight. So here’s your VES write-up.

This guild is a function of what your Oscar nominees are. Really they help only so far. You look to BAFTA to confirm where you think things are leaning, and the Oscar category is a mixture of that plus just looking at it, because a lot of the time the answer is obvious.

Here’s your Visual Effects Oscar category, to make things easier:

Avengers: Infinity WarChristopher Robin
First ManReady Player OneSolo: A Star Wars Story

There are seven major VES awards. Avengers: Infinity War won four of them, Best Effects, Animated Character, Composting and Effects Simulations. Ready Player One won two, Created Environment and Virtual Cinematography. First Man won for Supporting Effects. Also worth noting, Mortal Engines won for Models, and in Animated, Into the Spider-Verse swept everything, winning for Best Animated Effects, Animated Character, Created Environment and Effects Simulations.

So, on this alone, you might say Avengers is the frontrunner for the Oscar. I’m not going there just yet. I want to see what BAFTA does. Especially since the Oscar tends to go to the “classier” film with more of a pedigree, and that clearly seems like First Man in this case. If BAFTA goes Ready Player One then we have a decision on our hands. If Avengers manages to win BAFTA, then I may be swayed. And if First Man wins BAFTA, then you pretty much know exactly how this one’s gonna turn out.

I’m not calling this a huge win for Marvel just yet, only because they’ve yet to win the actual Oscar category. So let’s see where we’re at on Sunday once BAFTA announces and then regroup. I feel like, if anything, this might be a big Avengers red herring when First Man is staring us in the face all along as the probable winner of the category.

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